A blog about politics, science, archaeology, human evolution, jazz, culture, and the meaning of life by Michael Balter, a journalist and journalism professor based in Paris and New York (aka The Blog for People Who Don't Have Time to Read Blogs.)

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Thursday, March 17, 2016

A reader's guide to my Science story on the allegations concerning Brian Richmond

A number of things were cut from the story due to length and
legal issues. Many of them I would have preferred to keep in, and there would
have been room for them had the story run at six pages rather than five as I
had hoped. Although I have carefully vetted what I say here to be consistent with the guidelines we followed to avoid litigation as a result of the story, I take full responsibility for the content below and absolve Science, AAAS, and my editors at Science of any liability for it. Nevertheless, they were aware of these findings since they appeared in earlier drafts of my story and their accuracy was never questioned.

Here are the salient points:

1.Richmond was not the search committee’s first
choice. There were two searches: The first resulted in the curator position being
offered to a highly respected paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen
in Germany. After about 8-9 months of negotiations, she turned it down for
various reasons. Then there was a second search: Richmond was the search
committee’s third choice. The first choice, a popular African expert in human
evolution based at a US institution, was reportedly lowballed in the salary
offer by science provost Mike Novacek because Novacek really wanted the second
choice, a respected female anthropologist; she got a counter-offer at her
university, so that left Richmond. This provides important possible insights into
why Novacek protected Richmond when the allegations arose: Terminating him for
the alleged sexual assault would have required yet another lengthy search and
public embarrassment for the museum.

2.I know who most of the European researchers were
who were drinking with Richmond and the research assistant that night in
September 2014. They are reluctant to come forward because of European laws
against talking to the press about possible criminal allegations, but one did
tell me anonymously that the research assistant was definitely drunk and thus incapacitated. Other
evidence from these young researchers indicates that the research assistant
could not find her AirBnB and that it was agreed among some of the group that Richmond
would shelter her in his hotel. Richmond was her supervisor and it was assumed
that he could be trusted to take care of her. Richmond confirms these details
but insists that she was not so intoxicated that she could not have given
consent to the encounter.

3.I have been in direct contact with three friends
of the research assistant whom she told what had happened in the first few days
after her return to New York from Italy. They are referred to only very briefly
in the article as confirming that she was telling the same basic story of what
happened from the very beginning, even though one is on the record and provided
a full page written account which she was willing to have published with her name attached to it. This account was cited in my original draft,
together with this witness’s name, but was cut from the final. The key point is
that the research assistant apparently did remember the details after she woke
up in Richmond’s hotel room from the beginning, even if she had been too drunk
to remember how she got there in the first place. There is other strong
evidence that the research assistant did not change her story, as Richmond
insists, which we had decided to keep in reserve in case of litigation.

4.On the Monday after the research assistant
returned from Italy, her first day back at work at the museum, Richmond walked
into her office and she confronted him, demanding to know what she was doing in
his hotel room and what he had done to her. Richmond and the research assistant
agree about the basic details of this confrontation. He explained to her that
she could not find her AirBnB and he had made his hotel room available to her.
Richmond told me in an email that he was “startled” to hear that the research
assistant did not remember the events that led to this. The research assistant
later emailed a member of the group they had been with in Italy to ask what had
happened that night, leading up to the incident in the hotel room. The research
assistant says that there is a contradiction between Richmond saying that she
was not too drunk to give consent and at the same time insisting that she did not
remember the incident. This was an important point that did not make it into
the final version.

5.I either spoke or emailed with 11 people with whom
Rhea Gordon was in contact for her investigation; most of them either
experienced directly or witnessed directly what they claimed was inappropriate
sexual behavior by Richmond in various settings. The three anonymous women in
the story, who were at Koobi Fora, are
just one part of that. A mention of the 11 people was cut from the story. Gordon
was trying to see if there was a pattern of behavior, similar to what Bernard
Wood was looking for in his investigation. This truncation of our account of
Gordon’s investigation deprived readers of additional evidence that the museum
itself had apparently identified the same pattern of behavior beyond just the three
anonymous Koobi Fora witnesses.

6.Richmond has a point about the distortion of due
process by the museum. I began my investigation in early November 2015, and was
officially assigned to do the story by Science on Nov 16. By Nov 30 I had
enough information to go to Anne Canty at the AMNH and ask for certain
documents, interviews and other information, and I presented her with my
requests that day. Richmond says that he was asked to resign within the first few
days of December, ie, almost immediately after they knew for sure what we were
doing (I told Canty much of what we knew so that the museum would be as
forthcoming and transparent as possible.) He declined to say who asked him to resign, but in a
Dec 11 meeting of the anthropology division called by its chair, Laurel
Kendall, Kendall told colleagues that Novacek had asked for the resignation. Her
statement to the meeting is confirmed by three sources present at the time.
This important reference to the meeting and Kendall’s statements was cut from
the final version.

7.To underscore what is implied above: AMNH science
provost Mike Novacek was making many of the decisions here, perhaps in some
cases in collaboration with higher ups or with the museum’s legal department,
perhaps in some cases on his own. It might be a safe assumption that AMNH president Ellen
Futter is now involved in all major decisions.

Additional thoughts: My editors were rightly very concerned that our story be fully fair to Brian Richmond, a concern that I completely shared and acted on during the entire time that I was reporting the story. I aggressively pursued Richmond, urging him to tell his side of the story; and when he finally began to do that I inserted as many comments as possible from him, focusing on his strongest arguments as is standard ethical journalistic practice. However, fairness is not achieved by cutting important information and context such that a story becomes a "he says, she says" account rather than a search for the truth. I'm sure that my editors will not agree, but in my view some of the cuts had that effect.

Important additional information: All of the statements in this "reader's guide," as in the original story in Science, are multiply sourced and based on sound reporting of the facts of the case.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Sorry to hear. I admit I am always surprised by the variability in responses to sexual misconduct by academics. Have you ever thought of investigating the professor Horner at Montana State University perhaps using the Freedom of Information Act? He has married two of his students, one of which was only 19 at the time. There are numerous rumors of the university making special exceptions for him, of his inappropriate behavior around young women on his excavations, and even of sharing a tent with a young girl under the legal age. Where there is smoke there is fire and your courage could help many young women before the professor retires and such emails and communication are potentially lost.

The search is OVER for a new curator of biological anthropology!

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About Me

I have been a working journalist for the past 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For the past 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area.
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